This invention relates in general to antifriction bearings and, more particularly, to reconditioning such bearings.
Railcar wheels wear along their treads and flanges and periodically are removed from service and reconditioned or replaced, depending on the extent of the wear. When a wheel set is removed from its truck, the bearings for the wheel set are typically stripped from the journals to which they are fitted and replaced with new or reconditioned bearings, most likely the latter. The bearings that are removed are then reconditioned and installed on the journals of another wheel set.
Reconditioning bearings requires equipment and skills not ordinarily found in the typical shop for reconditioning wheels. The wheel shop ordinarily sends the bearings to a bearing manufacturer which operates a reconditioning facility—and that facility may exist at a location far removed from the wheel shop, perhaps even in a different country.
This arrangement creates problems and inefficiencies. For one, transporting bearings and keeping track of them is expensive. Moreover, each wheel shop must maintain a large inventory of bearings and perhaps bearing parts. Also, bearing reconditioning facilities often operate where the cost of labor is high and cannot take advantage of low-cost labor elsewhere. Some countries prohibit the export of government-owned equipment for any purpose, including reconditioning, so where restrictions of this type exist, a bearing that is removed from a wheel set for a car or locomotive of a government operated railway cannot be sent to a foreign country for reconditioning.